Over the years, digital video content has gained increasing popularity with consumers. With the vast amount of audio and video content available to consumers through broadcast, cable, on-demand, fixed media, and other available sources of multimedia content, consumers have access to a wide range of content and programming. Furthermore, an increasing amount of video content is becoming available over the Internet and other data services in the form of downloadable content.
Generally, video content can be stored in any number of common formats such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, or DV (digital video), for example. Likewise, audio content may be stored in any number of common digital formats such as MP3, WAV, or MPEG Audio, for example. The availability of multimedia content in a vast array of digital formats has helped make distribution of multimedia content easier because of the high degree of portability. Unfortunately, piracy of audio/visual works has also proliferated over the years as technology continues to facilitate the distribution of multimedia content. Because of the ease in accessing and copying multimedia content over the Internet for example, video and audio piracy continues to be an ongoing problem.
In response to unauthorized copying and distribution of multimedia content, publishers and authors of audio/visual works have relied on technologies that control access to digital content. The term Digital Rights Management (DRM) generally describes technologies used to achieve restricted access to multimedia content. Such DRM technologies are based on a large variety of technologies, including multimedia player software that control access to content using encryption. However, one apparent shortcoming of using software applications to control access to encrypted content is that such software can be accessed and reversed-engineered in many cases.
Given that personal computers generally operate in an open environment, it can be a challenge to protect multimedia content. In some instances, software code can be moved from a protected area of memory to an unprotected memory where the code is then dissected and analyzed. It is also possible to analyze a multimedia software application residing in open memory to determine the exact memory location where encryption keys are stored. With the proper tools, it is then possible to dump blocks of memory holding these encryption keys to gain access to protected content. Thus, software approaches to protecting encrypted multimedia content still suffer from the same apparent shortcomings as unprotected content.